So I came to install Call Of Duty 6 so I could play it after midnight tonight, but alas you can't even install it, let alone play it due to the product activation which requires steam!

What bugged me even more is the multitude of different, confusing or misleading 'error' messages that you get when you even try to install the game before the time that you're allowed to actually play it

Take this one for example:



"Sorry, but the following items are not available for purchase in this country.  Your purchase has been cancelled."

There's so many things wrong with this dialog:

1) The message appears above a box in which has no title.  It should be titled 'Products'
2) The product listed is incorrect.  It reads "Steam" when it should actually read "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2"
3) I wasn't trying to purchase anything.  I already paid my money to the retailer who in return posted me a DVD and a CD Key in the post.
4) I certainly wasn't trying to purchase a product called "Steam", a) steam is free, b) I wouldn't ever pay for steam!
5) The title of the dialog is "Product activation wizard" but it doesn't correspond to the contents of the dialog.
6) It says "Not available" above the error message.  That's a lie, it is available, the DVD is in my drive right now!
7) The only options you then have are "< Back" and "Cancel", an "Install now and I'll activate it later" would be nice.

As a good friend of mine would say.  "OMFG!, Seriously, WTF?"

This is how I would fix it.

1) Allow consumers to install games from physical media so they can activate it whenever they like.  Installing from Physical media should always be allowed, activation is the only thing publishers need to prevent if they need to prevent anything at all.
2) Show useful error messages, how about "Sorry, you cannot activate [insert correct product name here] at this time, please try after [insert date and timezone here]".

Not only is steam product activation annoying, filled with errors and headaches it also prevents you, Mr Consumer, from reselling the game you just bought?  Why?  Well the CD Key that comes with the game is then tied to your steam account and steam accounts and purchases are non transferrable.  If anyone other then you tried to use the CD Key again they won't be able to use it!

Product activation in this form is simply an attempt to stomp all over the second hand games market.  And for that, I declare that Steam sucks, Valve sucks

And quickly, while I've got someone's attention having no public/private/clan dedicated servers also sucks!

Valve, you really can't code for shit.

One of the things that really drives me mad when using OSX and Linux is the inconsistencies in keyboard shortcuts and menus between applications, I'm sure I'm not the only one bothered by this.

There are two main areas that I find to have problems:

1) Switching and cycling between tabs in applications that have a tabbed user interface

Almost every application I've tried has a different keyboard shortcut and different menu item to select between tabs, even applications from the same publisher have different shortcut keys!
Here's a list to demonstrate:
Safari, Window/Select next tab, ctrl + tab
Terminal, Window/Select next tab, cmd + }
Text Mate, Navigation/Next file tab, cmd + alt + right arrow
iTerm, Window/Select next tab, cmd + right arrow
Firefox, No menu items!, cmd + tab to cycle tables, cmd + alt + right arrow
Eclipse, Window/Navigation/Next editor, cmd + f6

It's almost impossible to remember what keyboard shortcut you should be pressing and you often end up either losing work or moving the cursor/focus to somewhere that you didn't intend.

2) cursor positioning and text selection

Some applications use the standard home/end keys to go to the start and end of the line, others use them to go to the top and bottom of the document
Some applications use the page up/page up keys to go up and down a page, some use them to go to the top or bottom of the document
Some applications use cmd + cursor keys to go to the start and end of a line, other applications use the keys to do something completely different.

Ok, so those are the problems I see, what can we establish to make things better?

1) Use the examples found in the applications made by the same company that makes the operating system and/or refer to their guide.  In apple's case they have made multiple applications with different keyboard shortcuts, in such a case I'd look at the keyboard shortcuts in the most popular applications (in their case, Safari) and go with the same menu options and keyboard shortcuts.

If you need to navigate tabs in order and cycle between them then please use 'ctrl' (or 'cmd' on a mac keyboard) + tab and use a modifier key and the cursor left/right keys to move between tabs in order.  I'd suggest using just one modifier key, preferrably 'alt' + arrow key.

2) use the standard windows conventions for cursor positioning and page navigation - many Mac and Linux users use Windows keyboards that actually have 'Home', 'End', 'Page Up', 'Page Down':
* Pressing 'Home' should go to the start of a line
* Pressing 'End' should go to the end of a line
* Pressing 'PgDn' should move page the document down one page, if the document is editable the cursor/caret should also move.
* Pressing 'PgUp' should move page the document up one page, if the document is editable the cursor/caret should also move.
* Pressing 'Shift + PgUp' should select a page worth of text before the cursor (or other document elements) and move the cursor to the start of the selection.
* Pressing 'Shift + PgDn' should select a page worth of text after the cursor (or other document elements) and move the cursor to the start of the selection.
* Pressing 'Shift + Home' should select all the text before the cursor to the start of the line and move the cursor to the start of the line
* Pressing 'Shift + End' should select all the text before the after to the end of the line and move the cursor to the end of the line
* Pressing 'Ctrl' (or 'cmd' on a mac keyboard) + 'Home' should move the cursor to the start of the document
* Pressing 'Ctrl' (or 'cmd' on a mac keyboard) + 'End' should move the cursor to the start of the document
* Pressing 'Ctrl' (or 'cmd' on a mac keyboard) + 'Shift' + 'Home' should select all the text in the document before the cursor and move the cursor to the start of the document
* Pressing 'Ctrl' (or 'cmd' on a mac keyboard) + 'Shift' + 'End' should select all the text in the document after the cursor and move the cursor to the start of the document

If you want to support other key combinations for text selection then please add those in ADDITION to the standard ones above.

Doing so will make it easy for everyone to use any application regardless of the operating system.

Windows Live For Games and Valve's Left For Dead both have major issues if the network card you use to connect to the internet as more than one IP addresses assigned to it.

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After a year or two of owning this domain name i finally dragged myself away from my code and suffered some system administration duties and have now setup this blog which I hope you and many other future readers will enjoy!